The Karl Marx Credit Card

A bank in the former East Germany asked customers what new option they'd like to see for their credit cards, and a bust of Karl Marx won out, Reuters reports, noting, too, that a 2008 survey showed 43% of residents in the former East Germany wanting a return to socialism. Angela Merkel, hardly the socialist, hails from the region.
Here's some Karl Marx for thought:
Talk about centralisation! The credit system, which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner — and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
That is so yesterday. You just are not cool unless you have your Chairman Mao debit card.
Soon we'll have Obama Bucks!
I wonder if that's what our government is using now? Just put it on my MarxCard.
"Lemme get out of these wet clothes and slip into a dry martini..."
The End Times are going to be all irony and hipster chic, aren't they...
I want a Barack Obama credit card:
- $14,000,000,000,000 limit
- you can charge your payments on the card.
- every time you reach your limit, you just get it raised.
The best part is if your creditors ever start complaining, you can claim that you're not really spending the money and blame someone else.
ObamaCard.
Don't leave home without it.
Don't leave home.
? Drone...drone on the range....?
Drone, drone within range.
What's the limit on it? Be aware, I'll need that in martini steak units.
Since the bill goes to your grand kids and George Bush, the higher the better.
It depends on your social status. If you're a member of the bourgeoisie, then you have a credit limit of zero. You're simply obligated to pay down the debt of other people.
If you're a member of the party, then the limit is whatever you need.
What's the limit on it?
It'll be raised next legislative session. Stimulus!
In former Eastern Soviet Bloc, credit cards YOU!
If you have this credit card, you don't get billed for your purchases, each month the debt is split equally among everyone who had it.
You'd like that, wouldn't you?
Yea but there is nothing to buy so it really doesn't make a difference.
Is Ute Hustermann the John Smith of Germany?
These are the big questions we need answers for. 😀
The Pol Pot Visa? Good everywhere except at food stores.
Talk about centralisation! The credit system Euro superstate, which has its focus in the so-called national banks governments and the big money-lenders Brussels bureaucracies and usurers rentseekers and kleptocrats surrounding them, constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists, but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner ? and this gang knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it.
Even without your changes, I had never read that statement from Marx.
And I was a bit stunned.
As would, I imagine, the academic Marxists in the U.S. who support a central government that "knows nothing about production and has nothing to do with it."
If Karl Marx had had a credit card, he could have afforded more booze and maybe never would have stumbled over to the British Museum Reading Room to write Das Kapital.
He did... his credit card was called "Friedrich Engels' daddy and his factories".
And no-one pointed out that the card is from the former Karl-Marx-Stadt!
So wall it back up and let them have it. We'll see how long they want to keep it.
Not with the wall and stuff, just the part where everybody had a job, and nobody had shiny things you could be jealous of. Can't we just take that part?
(hint: no)
The [former] East Germans want socialism, and they should get it - good and hard
Marx was against the centralization of political and economic power...
I love how the modern left can't get their shit together.
Anyway Marxism is from the mid-1800s while Keynesian economics is from the mid-1900s.
I think they both follow the same trajectory only Keynesian economics has not been around long enough for the left to completely turn it upside down and inside out.
only Keynesian economics has not been around long enough for the left to completely turn it upside down and inside out.
Sure they have. IIRC Keynesian economics calls for savings in the good times, spending in the bad (counter-cyclically). The modern left has now reduced that to just "spending".
It will always be bad times without government spending, duh. You libertarians are idiots; what, do you think wealth comes from leprechauns and unicorns or something?
The modern left has now reduced that to just "spending".
That is only sideways...we are talking about totally upside down and inside out.
Something along the lines of "going into 1000/1 debt to GDP ratio, burning the loaned money in effigy, then blowing ones brains out in mass is the only way we can grow this economy."
I am being more then half serious about this.
Going from Marx decentralization of economic and political power to the GULAG is equivalent to going from Keynesian "save in good times and spend in bad" to "going into 1000/1 debt to GDP ratio, burning the loaned money in effigy, then blowing ones brains out in mass is the only way we can grow this economy."
Woah, you want to be careful with talk like that, joshua. If you're caught, that's a GULAG offense.
Right now, shrike is applying for one of these cards.
Finally, the answer to the Lenin (possibly apocryphal) quote that the capitalists will sell you the rope to hang themselves.
Marx probably intended his remark to refer to company management, but it applies much better to government.
I'm surprised, though, that all those socialists haven't changed the name of Chemnitz back to Karl Marx Stadt.